Contents

History

Lisu history is passed from one generation to the next in the
form of songs. Today, this song is so long that it can take a whole
night to sing.[1]

Origins

The Lisu are believed to originate from eastern Tibet. Research done by Lisu scholars indicates
that they moved to northwestern Yunnan. They inhabited a region across Baoshan and the Tengchong plain for thousands of years. The
Lisu, Lahu, Akha and Kachin languages are
Tibetan-Burman languages, distantly related to Burmese and
Tibetan.[2][3][4][5] After
the Han Chinese Ming Dynasty, around
1140-1644 A.D. the eastern and Southern Lisu language and culture
were greatly influenced by Han culture of China.[6][7]
Taiping village in Yinjiang, Yunnan, China, was first
established by Lu Shi Lisu people about 1000 years ago. In the
mid-19th century, Lisu peoples in Yinjiang began moving into
Momeik, Burma, a population of
Southern Lisu moved into Mogok,
north-eastern Burma, and then in the late 19th century, moved into
northern Thailand.[8][9][10][7]

Culture

The Lisu tribe consists of more than 58 different clans. Each
family clan has its own name or surname. The biggest family clans
well known among the tribe clans are Laemae pha (Shue or The
Grass), Bya pha (The Bee), Thorne pha, Ngwa Pha (Fish), Naw pha
(Thou or Bean), Seu pha ( the Woods), Khaw pha. Most of the family
names came from their own work as hunters in the primitive time.
However, later, they adopted many Chinese family names.

After the Ming Dynasty, most Lisu tribe people had become a
people that lived in villages high in the mountains or in mountain
valleys. However, those who still lived in the Paoshan plains,
standing on the side of the Qing Dynasty, fought against the kingdom
of Ming. The Lisu knife ladder climbing festival was first held as
a memorial event of victory over Ming in 1644 A.D. The Lisu people
invented their own traditional dance so called "che-ngoh-che" along
with the Lisu guitar which has
no bars on the fretboard. They invented another musical
instrument called fulu jewlew as well. It is a kind of flute that has about six or seven
small bamboo tubes tied up
together to a dried-hollow-gourd. Songs and dances are different from each
other according to the occasions. They have different songs and
dances for weddings, homecoming hunters, harvest time and so on,
separately.

Lisu villages are usually built close to water to provide easy
access for washing and drinking.[6]
Their homes are usually built on the ground and have dirt floors
and bamboo walls, although an increasing number of the more
affluent Lisu are now building houses from wood or even
concrete.[1]

Lisu subsistence was based on paddy fields, mountain rice, fruit
and vegetables. However, they have typically lived in ecologically
fragile regions that do not easily support subsistence. They also
faced constant upheaval from both physical and social disasters
(earthquakes and landslides; wars and governments). Therefore, they
have typically been dependent on trade for survival. This included
work as porters and caravan guards. With the introduction of the opium poppy as a cash crop in the
early 19th century, many Lisu populations were able to achieve
economic stability. This lasted for over 100 years, but opium
production has all but disappeared in Thailand and China due to
interdiction of production. Very few Lisu ever used opium, or its
more common derivative heroin,
except for medicinal use by the elders to alleviate the pain of arthritis.[13]

The Lisu practiced swidden (slash and burn) horticulture. In
conditions of low population density where land can be fallowed for
many years, swiddening is an environmentally sustainable form of
horticulture. Despite decades of swiddening by hill tribes such as
the Lisu, northern Thailand had a higher proportion of intact
forest than any other part of Thailand. However, with road building
by the state, logging (some legal but mostly illegal) by Thai
companies,[14][15]
enclosure of land in national parks, and influx of immigrants from
the lowlands, swidden fields can not be fallowed, can not re-grow,
and swiddening results in large swathes of deforested
mountainsides. Under these conditions, Lisu and other swiddeners
have been forced to turn to new methods of agriculture to sustain
themselves.[16]

Lisu Women in Traditional Dress, Northern Thailand

Perhaps the best-known subgroup of the Lisu is the Flowery Lisu
in Thailand, due to hill tribe tourism. Lisu women are remarked for
their brightly colored dress. They wear a multi-colored knee-length
tunics of red, blue or green with a wide black belt and blue or
black pants. Sleeve shoulders and cuffs are decorated with a dense
applique of narrow horizontal bands of blue, red and yellow. Men
wear baggy pants, usually in bright colors but normally wear a more
western type of shirt or top.

Religion

Animism, shamanism,
ancestor worship

Lisu practice a religion that is part animistic, part ancestor worship, but is mixed within
complex local systems of place-based religion. Most important
rituals are performed by shamans. The main Lisu Festival corresponds
to the Chinese
New Year and is celebrated with music, feasting and drinking,
as are weddings; people wear large amounts of silver jewelry and
wear their best clothes at these times as a means of displaying
their success in the previous agricultural year. In each
traditional village there is a sacred grove at the top of the village,
where the sky spirit or, in Thailand, the Old Grandfather Spirit,
are propitiated with offerings; each house has an ancestor altar at the back of the house.
[17][18][19] See
later sections of this article for Christianity among the Lisu.

Christianity

Beginning in the 20th century, some Lisu people in China and
Burma converted to Christianity. Missionaries such as James O. Fraser
and Isobel Kuhn of the China Inland Mission, were active with the
Lisu of Yunnan[20]. The
Chinese government's Religious Affairs Bureau has proposed
considering Christianity as the official religion of the Lisu.[21]
According to estimates by the Christian organization OMF
International, as of 2008 there are now at least 300,000
Christian Lisu in Yunnan, China and 150,000 in Burma (between
40-50% of the Lisu population of each country). The Lisu of
Thailand have remained largely unchanged by Christian
influences[22][23].

Language

Linguistically, the Lisu belong to the Yi or Ngwi branch of
the Sino-Tibetan family[24].

There are two scripts in use and the Chinese Department of
Minorities publishes literature in both. The oldest and most widely
used one is the Fraser alphabet developed about 1920 by
James O.
Fraser and the Karen evangelist Ba Taw. The second script
was developed by the Chinese government and is based on pinyin.

Fraser's script for the Lisu language was used to prepare the
first published works in Lisu which were a catechism, portions of Scripture, and eventually, with much help from
his colleagues, a complete New Testament in 1936. In 1992, the
Chinese government officially recognized the Fraser alphabet as the
official script of the Lisu language.[25]

Only a small portion of Lisu are actually able to read or write
the script, with most learning to read and write the local language
(Chinese, Thai, Burmese) through primary education.

Ascent to the Tribes: Pioneering in North Thailand,
Kuhn, Isobel OMF Books (2000)

Precious Things of the Lasting Hills, Kuhn, Isobel OMF
Books (1977)

Second Mile People, Kuhn, Isobel Shaw Books (December
1999)

Nests Above the Abyss, Kuhn, Isobel Moody Press
(1964)

The Dogs May Bark, but the Caravan Moves On, Morse,
Gertrude College Press, (1998)

Transformations of Lisu social structure under opium
control and watershed conservation in northern Thailand,
Gillogly, Kathleen A. PhD thesis, Anthropology, University of
Michigan. 2006. Available as open access at http://manao.manoa.hawaii.edu/38/.